So this is what owning a house is like

One of the things that it is recommended that you do before you close on a house is do a walk-thru just to make sure that the house is in good condition. We scheduled the walk-through to happen the morning of the closing. Then we get a phone call from their broker saying that the owner isn't there and she doesn't know where he is. The owner and his girlfriend live 2 hours away. We were supposed to close at 12:30 and they didn't leave their house until after 10 am. The bank attorney could not change the closing time. So we had to close on the house without having seen it since the inspection in early October. And perhaps that's a good thing.

They hadn't cleaned out the house. It was still filled with their stuff. So, we gave them until noon on Sunday to clean everything out. We did this because we are nice and reasonable people. And because we'd rather them get their stuff out rather than having to be responsible for removing it ourselves. It took them until noon on Sunday and they still left a mess.

Here's the parlor.
Notice the trash left behind.

Here's the kitchen:

Notice something missing? And yes, those are unwashed dishes.

I haven't even taken any pictures of the basement. We're going to have to hire someone for that cleanup.

OK. No big deal. We can clean stuff up and throw things away. So, Marcos gets busy on changing the locks.


And that's when we notice that all of the doors have been damaged by multiple changing of locks and the installation of dead bolts on inside doors. The previous owner had been renting out rooms. Basically, this place was a flop house. No big deal. We can replace door knobs. And then we find that, sometime this morning as they were getting the last of their stuff out, the door to the master bedroom became locked. And we don't have a key. We went out and bought a pipe saw and Marcos cut the knob off. Because dammit it is our house and we can do that if we want to! And it was cheaper than hiring a locksmith.

We've replaced almost all of the door knobs with non-locking knobs. Eventually we will have to replace most of the inside doors, at least if we can't repair them. It's amazing how badly this house was cared for.

Yep. A helluva move-in. And we haven't even moved in yet.

We still have a bit of cleaning to do before next Friday when the movers come. But the good news is that we will have new kitchen appliances by the end of the month.

You can see the rest of the pictures of the house by clicking on the gallery link above.